It has been general practice to catch poultry by hand. This has proved unsatisfactory because it is labour intensive, time consuming and generally results in injury to the poultry either directly as a result of hand catching or because in attempts to evade capture the poultry collide with obstructions and each other sustaining bruising which lowers their market value.
There has been several proposals for gathering poultry by mechanical means but these have not met with commercial success.
French Patent No. 2,411,106 (7738148) discloses a tractor mounted collector for chickens having a horizontally disposed flexible bladed rotor to urge birds from the ground onto a conveyor arranged transversely to the direction of travel of the tractor and collector.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,672,335 discloses a mobile self-propelled gathering device comprising a rotatable or reciprocable pusher acting in conjunction with a plurality of conveyor means so as to first ride over the top of birds on the floor of a growing house and thereafter engage the birds and push the birds bodily in a rearward direction onto the conveyor means which extend upwardly and rearwardly of the gathering device.
In the applicant's co-pending European patent application there is disclosed collecting apparatus which comprises a mobile supporting framework mounting two elongate members adapted to be driven counter to one another and disposed with their axes parallel to one another and in use, to a supporting surface across which the framework is intended to be moved. The members define therebetween a passage and means lesser in length than the passage is deep outstand from around the members. Various embodiments are described therein but the principle in each case is that the members cooperate to carefully pick up an object from a surface, e.g. a chicken from the ground and elevate it to a plurality of conveyors for collection and shipment.
A problem identified with such apparatus is the herding or driving of poultry before the advancing apparatus which results in entrapment of lesser numbers of poultry than is theoretically possible were they to remain stationary.
In addition caging of the collected poultry until now has been a difficult and time consuming aspect of the collection and transport operation.
An object of the present invention is to provide further improvement in this art.